Just Imagine
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: Alicia is a girl in a broken home, with a father that hits her. Alicia is a girl, whose only escape is a movie she has watched over and over again. The Matrix. And when she closes her eyes, Smith comes and takes care of her.


Just Imagine  
  
She was crying. She was always crying. Always running, always hiding.  
  
She stumbled as she ran to the one place she knew she'd be okay. A place she knew no one could find her. Where she could be alone.  
  
And the people watched as the little girl cried, and ran passed them. They wonder why she is crying, where she is going, but they don't do anything. Because no one does anything. No one ever does.  
  
She runs to a place where no one goes. She runs into a crowd, where she will be lost in the many, where no one will be able find her. She runs in the crowd, as they walk passed her, wondering why. Then she runs through them, passed them, and goes where no one goes.  
  
It is a placed long abandoned, like her. A place beaten and battered by the passing crowds, like her. It is a place that no one cares about, no one notices, like her. It is a place she likes to draw in, a place she likes to write in.  
  
She calls it Her Matrix, because it is hers. And no one cares if it is hers or not.  
  
She runs up the stairs like she always does, they are familiar to her, and welcome her, as they catch her tears.  
  
She slows as the stairs end to the third floor, and she walks down the hallway with holes on the walls and floors. Such a broken place, the only place that gives her a smile. She stares lovingly at the broken down hallway, as she walks slowly to her room.  
  
The room, with the door marked 303.  
  
She wipes her tears, as she steps into the room, her room. Her room with the old black phone in the corner. Her room with the backpack full of food, books, CDs, and DVDs leaning on the wall. Her room with the drawings on the wall, and the blank paged books stacked in the corner. Sometimes she writes in the blank books, telling in her own way what happened today, why she is crying this time. She wrote poems, and stories. And allowed her tears to fall onto the pages.  
  
She smiled as she fell to the dirty floor, and huddled up. Then she cried. And cried, and cried, and cried.  
  
Memories of his voice, lingering in her head, him saying he will be there. Then she goes to meet him, and he never comes.  
  
Memories, of her father and mother, that shouldn't be her father and mother. Memories of their screaming voices. How her father gets angry for no reason. How she's always in the way of his fists.  
  
She buries her head in her legs, and you see the bruises on her arm.  
  
He never hits me hard, she tells herself. He never hits me hard, she tells him.  
  
She cries because it hurts. She cries because he yelled at her again. She should be used to it now, but she isn't. She cries because people give her promises they never keep. She cries because her mother doesn't stop her father. Her mother doesn't make the pain feel any better.  
  
She cries because she doesn't know where he is. What is taking him so long? Did he leave me?  
  
She is alone, in room 303, with the drawings on the wall, and the blood in the hallway.  
  
"Why are you crying this time?"  
  
She smiles, and looks up.  
  
"What took you so long?" She asks quietly.  
  
"My copies and I had some business to attend to."  
  
The man in the suit, bends down to her lying on the floor. He stares at her, almost smiling, watching the tears go down her face. He tries to make her smile too.  
  
It is inevitable, as she smiles at this man. The man in the suit. The man she depends on. The man she knows so well. This man, this man she calls Smith.  
  
"Smith..." She calls him quietly.  
  
She gets up.  
  
"Yes, Ms. Evans?" He tilts his head.  
  
She looks at him.  
  
"Alicia." He corrects himself.  
  
"Smith." She says lovingly.  
  
She crawls to the wall with a drawing a men in suits, and picks up the pencil on the floor.  
  
"He hit me again." She whispers.  
  
"Alicia..."  
  
Smith goes to the little girl, and grabs her arm. He moves it to his vision, and she allows him, and looks away. He moves her arm, seeing the fading bruises, and the new bruise. He gently moves his hand around her arm.  
  
"You have to stop this." He tells her.  
  
"He never hits me hard." Alicia says.  
  
"But he still hits you."  
  
She ignores him, as she continues finishing the shoe on one of the men in suits on the wall.  
  
"I'm going to draw Neo over there." She points to the right wall. "It'll be like they're shooting him." She says joyfully.  
  
Then she turns back to wall, and continues to shade the shoe. And through the fake smile she gives, she starts crying again. Alicia, little Alicia, she can't stop the tears.  
  
"You have to stop him." Smith tells her.  
  
She ignores him.  
  
"They are many of your kind you can inform."  
  
She ignores him, putting his voice in the back of her head.  
  
"There is no purpose in what,"  
  
"Then why don't you do something!" She turns to him.  
  
He is silent.  
  
"You know I cannot." Smith says.  
  
She drops the pencil, and rests her head on the wall, staring at him.  
  
"Smith..." She whispers.  
  
No one was ever there for Alicia, in her broken home and broken family. No one was there when the six-year-old Alicia fell off her bike, or when she got a fever one night.  
  
No one was there when she turned thirteen, and when she bought her own cake and candles to blow out.  
  
No one is there to hear her scream when her father hits her, and her mother watches.  
  
No one was ever there, until she met Smith.  
  
"Yes, Alicia?" He asks.  
  
"Smith..." She stares at him, tears in her eyes.  
  
"How did you get here?" He asks, moving closer to her.  
  
"I took the subway."  
  
"I told you not to."  
  
"I know..."  
  
The friends she's never had, the people at school laugh at her. She doesn't know why, she's just being her, trench coat and all. She lowers her head, thinking it must be something she said, and tries to make the laughs go away.  
  
Tries to hide the bruises.  
  
"Smith..." She says again.  
  
No one is ever there.  
  
"I'm here, Alicia..."  
  
No one ever comes.  
  
"Everything will be okay."  
  
"Smith..."  
  
Then Smith grabs her by the arm, and pulls her closer. He is gentle, she told him how to be gentle. He holds her close, and puts her in his arms. He gives her the love she deserves. The love no one else gives her.  
  
"Why does it...?" Alicia began.  
  
"Sh..." He commands her.  
  
She stops, and closes her eyes. She gives in to him, into the love he offers her. The love she made him give her. And she buries her head in his arms, and cries. He holds her tightly, he will not leave her. He will not leave this little girl, he will not leave, not this time, not like everyone else.  
  
"Why does he hate me!?" She cries.  
  
"He doesn't. He just doesn't know how to love." Smith tries to explain.  
  
He rocks her, and tries to make it seem better.  
  
And she gives into it, wanting more of it, this feeling, this love. This love he only gives to her. A love she needs. The love she demands to have.  
  
She just cries and cries and cries. But at least she cries with him.  
  
  
  
"I saw 'The Matrix' again last night on T.V." She says hours later, when she is better.  
  
"And?" Smith asks.  
  
She turns and smiles at him.  
  
"You died as usual." She jokes.  
  
And Smith, rolls his blue eyes, as he takes off his sunglasses. Alicia sees him put down the sunglasses, and jumps for them, knocking down the backpack on the wall. She grabs the sunglasses, and puts them on.  
  
"Let me see!"  
  
She lies on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, with Smith looking down at her.  
  
"They are a little big for you." He says.  
  
She laughs, and he smiles.  
  
"Smith."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"You'll always be here, right?"  
  
"Yes, I will be here."  
  
And the backpack falls, and things come out of it. The items fall to Alicia's feet, but she doesn't care, still looking up at the ceiling. What falls are the book, "Simulacra, and Simulation," Cookies Alicia says that the Oracle made, green PowerAde, and three DVDs.  
  
The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions.  
  
Alicia smiles at Smith.  
  
A few years ago, Alicia saw the movie, "The Matrix" by sneaking into a movie theater. The next day she got the eighty dollars she had been saving and bought a Trench Coat. A month later she bought a formal suit in her size. Then another week to save up for the tie clip.  
  
She drowned in the world of computers as she learned how to work them. Looking up pictures of the movie, and going on the website. Trying and trying and trying to become a hacker, and failing.  
  
Alicia loved the Matrix. Alicia escaped with the Matrix. It gave her false hope that someday she would be freed and unplugged away from her father and mother. Away from the world that gave her no love. Alicia hoped and hoped, and dreamed and dreamed of the Agents and Neo. She dreamed of Smith and Neo fighting, and one of them trying to protect her.  
  
Alicia saw the Matrix Reloaded years after, and saw how everyone had changed. How Smith had evolved. How Smith always seemed in pain. How Smith did things he was never supposed to do. Alicia saw the Matrix Revolutions, and cried when Smith died.  
  
Smith was heartless, Smith was nothing but a program, but Smith was the person that held her.  
  
And slowly Alicia's worlds began to collide. Slowly, the young girl lost touched in the reality she never liked. Slowly Alicia let go of reality, she pushed it away, and made her dreams come true.  
  
She made Smith and Neo come alive. She made herself think the Matrix was real. The young girl was only searching for a sanctuary, and made it for herself when she could not find it. The Smith she saw, the Smith that held her, didn't exist in reality. But in Alicia's world, beaten and broken from a father that hits her, Smith was real. And Smith was the only one that loved her.  
  
It was Alicia her bought an old black phone to put in her room. It was Alicia that put the blood on the wall, and scribbled the numbers 303 on the door. Alicia her made this abandoned broken place exactly like where Neo and Smith died, and where The One and Virus were born.  
  
And she got up and hugged Smith. Hugged the person that was not there. Hugged the only person that gave her love. The person that she makes say he will be there for her.  
  
Alicia with a broken body, and broken mind, misplacing movies and life. Alicia, the greatest fan of the Matrix.  
  
Alicia who writes fanfiction, that to her is not fanficton, and draws fanart that is not fanart.  
  
Alicia who makes her father's beatings less bad, because Smith is there for her.  
  
But to Alicia, Smith embraces her, and tells her everything is going to be okay.  
  
She closes her eyes, and makes it happen. She closes her eyes and imagines it, and to her it happens. Her imaginary friend, her imaginary world, Smith and the Matrix.  
  
"You should go home." Smith tells her.  
  
"Okay."  
  
Smith begins to leave Alicia's Matrix.  
  
"Hey!" She calls him. "You said you'd give me a Matrix name today." She says.  
  
Smith smiles, and bends down to her on the floor. He lifts her head up by her chin, and grabs his sunglasses off her eyes.  
  
"I will call you Chara. It means happiness and joy." He says.  
  
And she smiles lovingly and dependently at him, as he leaves, putting his sunglasses on.  
  
Alicia smiles, and tells herself before going home she is going to finish Agent Brown's shoe on the wall. She crawls to the picture, and starts shading in the shoe, smiling, and humming something from the Matrix Reloaded Album.  
  
Alicia is in her world now. Alicia, Ms. Evans, Chara is in her world now. Imagining and closing her eyes, living her dreams.  
  
Chara, who swears she just saw Neo fly by her window.  
  
  
  
To my readers,  
  
I have been able to provide you with now 60 stories. And now I wish to show drawings I have made of these stories. Including new ones if you have already seen them. I even have a little comic on how Angel, from Daddy's Little Girl was born. Please if you wish to see, go to my profile.  
  
Thank you, Shadow 


End file.
